Fateful Bodies

Stocky, muscular college students are likely to succeed in engineering; portly young men with substandard muscles are better off in the law. These are conclusions of Frederick L. Stagg, Harvard research fellow in physical anthropology, who specializes in human bodies and their effects on their tenants.

Stagg studied the careers of 2,631 Harvard men of the classes of 1876-1912 whose body types had been recorded photographically during undergraduate physical training programs. He coded the information that he gathered and punched it on cards. Then he ran the cards through sorting machines to see how the career of each man compared with his physique.

When the information cards were processed by the machine, they showed that lean and nonmuscular Harvard students tended to become Government officials or parsons. Moderately lean students with better muscles than average often became successful scientists. Harvard-bred artists usually developed out of students with medium fleshiness and below-par muscles. The heavy but muscular students went in for the practical callings of engineering or business and generally succeeded, while lighter-bodied competitors dropped out. A few of the Harvard men sank to manual labor, but only the poorer-muscled ones stayed at that level all their lives. The better-muscled soon rose to positions where they did not depend on their muscles.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.